UPDATEBUSINESS ANALYSIS FOR OUR CONCERNED INVESTORS
It is true that at times we have been pessimistic. When Drew unintentionally summoned forth an army of Aztec warrior zombies after getting a nose bleed over the Jade Skull of Apuch, or the time we were sucked into the necroverse and had to battle the most evil people in history, or the time Rye died, or the time Rye came back to life, or the time nobody paid us for anything we did but somehow we managed to pay the bills, or the time Foodstop™ replaced their conversation corner “The Nook” with a Dunkin Donuts™, or the time Thorn Hammerfall sent us a story about getting drunk which wasn’t any good but we put it on the site anyways, or the time Ben… Let’s just say there weren’t quite enough perks to this job for Ben. So yes, it is true we have been known to look on the downside sometimes, but this time there is no bright side to look on.
In 1986 Starting a local zombie extermination business seemed like a novel idea. It was the 80’s, girls just wanted to have fun and zombies just wanted to crawl forth from the charred radioactive remains of Blue Springs Vermont. There was a supply of zombies and a demand to get rid of them, thus Jim Rage’s Elite Zombie Hunting Squad was born.
Then came the 90’s and that unfathomable apocalyptic mesh of lies known as the internet ushered in the information era. Business had slowed in Blue Springs and our relative boom from 86’ to the mid 90’s gave us the idea to expand our coverage to most of New England (with exception to Rhode Island which is overrun by sand monsters and is too dangerous for even the most rugged of souls). Yellow Pages were out. Roller blades, cell phones, and bottled water were in, all of which had in someway come about as a result of the internet. Being the trendy go getters that we are, we hopped on that band wagon like grease hops off sizzling bacon and thus www.jimrage.com was born. Of course knowing nothing about the internet it took us about a decade to actually get the site onto the web.
Even then however we were cutting edge. It was 2004 (The Retro Summer Of Love). Everyone was swept up in the nostalgia craze and could be seen totting anything from floral jump suits to Hall and Oats dashboard bobble heads. Both opposing parties of the Disco Sucks argument had their fated second battle and long forgotten Pop Heroes regained their celebrity status (even if just as novelty reality TV stars). In this world where to understand anything that was going on you had to know about every pop culture reference that was ever made between 65 and 99 so that you could do things ironically and climb the social ladder both in the real world and on the internet, things that were actually happening at the current time got swept under the rug. Thus www.jimrage.com mostly went unnoticed along with Lance Armstrong’s sixth Tour De France victory and Dafur.
Over the years however Jim Rage’s Elite Zombie Hunting Squad has gained a small seat on the internet royal thrown and is known best amongst those in the zombie internet ring. When we first started out we found that there were other like us: The 369th Urban Defense Command, The Federal Vampire and Zombie Agency, and Zombie Squad.
Once the retro craze thing got a little old however in came the zombie craze. Every day a new zombie movie comes out and it’s always bad. There are approximately 85,000 other sites made by people claiming to be zombie hunters and all of them have there own advise. Now we don’t like to get big headed or anything, but trust us our site is better. It’s one thing if you’re out there trying to make a living in the zombie extermination market so you can feed your starving family. It’s another thing if you see Land of The Dead, think it’s really cool when the guys face gets pulled off, make a site about it, abandon it about a week later after you watch Aqua Teen Hunger Force and decide that you will become a cartoonist because it really doesn’t seem like it’s that hard anymore. Trust us our site has soul and by supporting it, you are supporting hard working everyday shmoes. You know the type. The guys who lends you a quarter at the Laundromat, the woman who isn’t afraid to sit next to you on the bus even though you haven’t had time to shave for the past eight years, the guy at the diner who isn’t angry that there isn’t any cream. You can call us what you like, but we call ourselves Americans. We work hard to bring you the best service we can.
All this being said it is time that we bring you to the point we’ve been trying to illustrate. Despite all that we have done zombo.com is a better site then ours. Go check it out. It makes us laugh. We’re not certain as of yet what implications this will have on our site. With a name like zombo.com it may draw the ever important customers away from our site, but what can we say? They’ve done good.
On a completely different note our new Associate Producer (Cash Hollywood) remains optimistic that we have real market potential but that we have to focus our collective energies to become a commercial success. There is popular demand for more Baxter Black Brand training videos and at our weekly meetings we’ve been drafting up ideas for a DVD/book box set to sell over TV shopping networks to get the American public healthy, fit, and above all tough (The Baxter Black Way). Zachary Carvin’ Kervin has proposed a Jim Rage brand restaurant named “Killer Sandwiches” It’s be in the same vain as Planet Hollywood, a family friendly niche restaurant owned by real zombie hunters. There has been controversy however over the actual sandwiches. Zachary thinks that all the sandwiches should be palindromes. I.E. a ham sandwich would be made bread, ham, cheese, ham, bread. To add to the corky appeal all the sandwiches would have palindrome names like the “Yo Bo Ho Boy” 
which would be a sub grinder. Others like Brock Ironside believe that the sandwiches should be filled with sauces and appear to be bleeding (Think sloppy Joes) leading back to the name “Killer Sandwiches”. In time the kinks will be sorted out.
Despite the fact that our headquarters has been made into a family activity center by Maxximmortal, Smokey Bellicose, and Max Powers we see no reason to change it back to an office since most of our belongings and employees were destroyed during the initial wave of the Zombie Apocalypse and the bowling alley/shooting range seems to be drawing in revenue along with the indoor surfing machine and meditation club. Maxximmortal has also been working on a robot to sell ice cream on the beach with. The novelty of buying ice cream from a robot has real commercial potential and although it has nothing to do with hunting zombies Cash Hollywood assures us that it is not uncommon for a cooperation to broaden out into markets which have little or no connection with the original business. It’s just a good business strategy.
It seems as though someone may be jealous of our new found money managing skills and has sent us a gift basket full of Twinkies™ and Ring Dings™, which upon further inspection were filled with high powered explosives. There was no return address.
The actual work on the upcoming Jim Rage Zombie Epic has been going slowly. The Mad Hatter and Drew Parazinski have sold the rights to the story “Beyond Bloodshot”, but the feasibility of making it may be out for us because of the close ties it has to Ben Parazinski. We fear a legal suit and thus we’ve decided it best to dump it on someone else, while it’s hot.
Cash Hollywood has advised us to hire some more employees who have more appeal with the teen target market. It is also apparent that we have to gain more racial and gender viability (since we are mostly just white guys from Vermont). This being said we are currently seeking employees who fit this profile. Think The Matrix™, meets Blade II™, meets Æon Flux™. Also keep an eye out for Alice Thompson who is scouring the beaches of California for young entrepreneurs who can lend us some more sex appeal.
With a little bit of luck we may be beat out those cooperate rats at zombo.com
